The Housing Bubble

The St Petersburg Times reports from Florida. “Sales consultant Mike Morrell of David Weekley Homes was baking cookies last Saturday in the kitchen of a three-bedroom, 3,200-square-foot, $410,000 model home that was on display at the new Southern Hills Plantation, south of downtown on U.S. 41. The cookie count in the early afternoon was up to eight dozen. ‘If you feed them,’ Morrell said, ‘they will come.’”

“In late ‘05, when the Southern Hills sales center opened, the least expensive homes had a bare-bones tag of about $325,000, and that didn’t include the lots, which started at about $80,000. Now some of the smaller ‘cottage’ homes can be had for as low as $248,900, with the lots priced at $66,900.”

“One home built by Windjammer, with four bedrooms, a three-car garage, 4,032 square feet and a two-story pool cage the size of a small concert hall, was priced at $1.3-million but is on special right now for $990,000.” “‘If you’ve got a spare million bucks,’ Southern Hills sales manager Steve Erick said, ‘we’ll even give you change.’”

“In June 2004, on one Saturday, the company sold 302 lots for more than $38-million. A year later, again on a single Saturday, the site sales were similarly stunning: 236 lots for $40-million. The buyers were empty nesters and people from Tampa or states up north looking for second homes.The development, which ultimately could have as many as 999 homes.”

“Only 12 homes have people living in them. Erick is in one of them. He said all of the people who live in Southern Hills got together for a party for Christmas and fit into one family room.”

“After laying off most employees of Construction Compliance Inc. in January, Jesse Battle III is selling his downtown St. Petersburg headquarters. Battle’s cell phone has been disconnected, and colleagues say he contemplates a move to North Carolina.”

“But legal troubles will be hard for the businessman to shake off. As customers flood Tallahassee with written complaints larded with ‘defraud’ and ’scam,’ the state has opened an investigation into some of the 482 deals that collapsed when Battle stopped building last year.”

“‘If I were him I would move somewhere, too. But if he thinks all this stuff won’t follow him, he’s wrong,’ said Bob Shapiro, a Venice cabinet contractor who lost nearly $500,000 when Battle stopped paying bills around October.”

“One person hot on Battle’s tail, and that of Coast Bank, is Port Charlotte attorney Tom Carrero. He’s one of at least five attorneys retained by burned CCI customers. Carrero sent CCI a letter for each of his nearly 45 clients. ‘I said, ‘Hey, you’ve got seven days to complete this home.’ They haven’t responded,’ Carrero said. ‘It looks like they’ll only do something when they get sued.’”

“For people like Shapiro, it hardly matters whether Battle intended to harm his customers or simply failed to negotiate last year’s real estate downturn. In Shapiro’s opinion, Battle realized that houses he completed wouldn’t turn a profit. So he simply stopped work.”

“‘Is mismanagement criminal?’ Shapiro said. ‘Yes, I think it is. At least in this case.’”

The Herald Tribune. “Coast Bank of Florida passed on the chance to unload a property for less than a third of what the bank loaned on it. So the bank’s foreclosure against developer Michael Tringali will continue.”

“The highest auction bid was $1.6 million, which means Coast would take a $3.34 million loss if it agreed to the sale. ‘We’re not going to accept that,’ Coast spokesman Tramm Hudson said. ‘We’re not willing to do that.’”

“Bradenton-based Coast is in no position to take that kind of hit The company already faces problems stemming from $110 million in loans to nearly 500 home buyers, many of them speculators, who were doing business with Construction Compliance Inc., a St. Petersburg company that has stopped all work.”

“Tringali stopped paying the Coast loan, so the bank is suing to take the property. ‘We see no likely opportunity to get repaid, so we are taking the collateral so that we can either hold on to it or sell it ourselves,’ Hudson said.”

“If the bank can’t sell the land for the full amount of the loan, it would likely sue Tringali to recover the rest of what it is owed.”

“Hudson wanted to emphasize that Coast did not arrange the auction. ‘The bank did not order this auction,’ said Hudson, who attended. ‘The customer of his own volition decided to try and sell properties in this manner.’”

“Tringali offered a number of homes and lots in Sarasota and Manatee counties for sale at the auction, but few bids came in at more than half of the property’s value during the boom.”

The Wall Street Journal. “Aleem Hussain formed his real-estate company in 2004, calling it Main Street USA, after a nearby Disney World attraction. He bought a complex of 27 aging, two-story apartment houses in Orlando and set out to convert them into condos.”

“But not much has gone as planned for Mr. Hussain, nor has it for his hundreds of investors, who include a bunch of local sheriff’s deputies. Today, Mr. Hussain’s company is being liquidated by a federal bankruptcy court, and he is residing in the Seminole County jail, charged with 23 counts of federal mail and wire fraud.”

“Mr. Hussain’s rise and fall illustrates one of the hazards of a frothy property market: inexperienced developers get in over their heads and drag unsophisticated investors down with them.”

“‘Schoolteachers, cops, doctors, priests, everyone thought they were Donald Trump,’ says Lewis Freeman, the court-appointed trustee administering Main Street’s bankruptcy proceeding. Mr. Hussain’s company, he contends, was a ‘microcosm of the total market. You had a lot of unqualified people getting easy money and able to go into businesses in which they didn’t know what they were doing.’”

“Bryan Margeson, a sheriff’s department employee introduced Mr. Hussain at investment seminars and talked about how he thought Orlando’s boom would continue for years. Mr. Margeson, who says he lost $100,000, says Mr. Hussain ‘used me for some credibility, which I didn’t realize they lacked.’”

“Investors and others have filed $19 million of claims in bankruptcy court. The company’s remaining assets are being liquidated by the court. It is unlikely that investors will recoup much of their money, according to several people involved in the case.”

“Mr. Margeson refers to the affair as his ‘$100,000 lesson.’ He notes that he ‘never saw people strong-armed to invest. The sad part is people lined up to invest their money. It was the whole furor of the real-estate market.’”

From TC Palm. “The 29.2-acre site has been cleared and a central road put down. The 82 lots have been pre-approved for homes. But the manager of the project is ready to walk away if the price is right because of the ongoing housing slump.”

“Dan Garcia, manager and co-owner of the Segovia Lakes development, cited market difficulties on Friday for putting the multi-family property on the market for $8.5 million.”

“Garcia said he and his partners decided to sell the subdivision instead of moving forward with construction even after obtaining costly land entitlements and development permits from Indian River County. ‘There’s a lot of inventory that needs to be absorbed in Vero Beach,’ Garcia said. ‘If we find an appropriate buyer, we’ll sell it, the price is negotiable.’”

“Although Garcia said the price was negotiable, it may take some time before a builder will purchase the property, said custom home builder Richard Hope in Vero Beach.”

“‘It’s hard for me to say whether it’s a fair price or not,’ said Hope, immediate past president of the Treasure Coast Home Builders Association. ‘There’s a lot of carrying costs associated with a property like that if someone buys it as an investment to sit on it for a while.’”